Quick Links
If you were a Final Fantasy fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then the eighth and ninth entries' in-game card games, Triple Triad and Tetra Master, probably ate up more than a few hours. After a nearly 25-year hiatus,Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthhas brought a third card game to the time-honored franchise: Queen’s Blood.
Queen’s Blood is captivatingly good, and even if you’re only in FF7 Rebirth for its story, you can capitalize upon some degree of skill in it to enjoy a fabulous event on a certain cruise ship - and a purely card-driven side quest. Here’s how to play!
What Is Queen’s Blood?
Queen’s Bloodis acompetitive card gameset in the world of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. Introduced in FF7 Rebirth, it involvescollecting increasingly powerful cardsas you travel the world,battling opponents of steadily higher ranks.
There’s serious depth to this game. Queen’s Blood is played on a board withseven spaces (tiles) on each of three rows. You’ll place (most) cards on empty tiles, butonly tiles which are presently denoted as within your control.
Withdozens upon dozens of cards, you will have at least as many potential strategies at your disposal.
There are fourtypes of cards:
Although you will only ever haveone of each card, they are nevertheless sorted in rarity betweencommon and legendary. As you probably assume,legendary cards tend to be quite powerful.
How To Play Queen’s Blood
Time to dive right into the hottest card game ever to hit Gaia. Below, we’ll detail each of thefour main aspects of Queen’s Blood, but you will need to read your cards while deckbuilding to seepreciselywhat they do.
Queen’s Blood is a deep, deep card game. As such,while cards fall into specific categories, and follow the same overarching rules, you’ll discover a great deal of deviations inhowthey follow those rules.
Preparation And Opening Hand
Queen’s Blood is played with15-card decks. There arepre-constructed decks, but you’ll generally want tobuild your own. At the beginning of the game,you and your opponent each draw five cardsat random.
to craft a pre-constructed deck, you will need to have the requisite cards in your collection.
You canmulliganas many as you’d like, but what you get the second time around is what you’ll have to keep. You and your opponent thentake turns placing one card per round.
Taking a mulligan can mean a couple of things, depending on the card game. In Queen’s Blood’s case, it meanschoosing cards to return to your deck and replaceothers.
Starting Ranks
You’ll always go first in Queen’s Blood. On your turn, you choose one of your cards to place on the board inone of your three initially controlled tiles. These tiles will be the same for your opponent and yourself, butyours are on the left and theirs are on the right.
Thefirst column to your left, with its three vertical tiles, will have aglowing green piece on each tile. Do note that your opponent’s, with the final (righthand) column,will mirror yours, albeit withred glowing pieces.
Depending on thecurrent rank of a tile, you’ll see betweenone, two, and three glowing pieceson that tile. In the opening round,both players' controlled tiles have only one piece, meaningonly cards of the first (of three) rankscan be placed.
You can check which rank your cards belong to by looking at the card’stop-left corner. It’s a good idea to ensure you haveat least three first-rank cards in your opening hand, as you’ll be stuck playing first-rank cards early on!
Raising Ranks
When a card is placed upon a tile,the representative diagram on the card informs you of which tiles will be affected.
The diagram’s grid features five rows, rather than the three present on the game’s board. This is because yourchosen placement of each card determines how many of the board’s tiles are actually impacted.
For instance, if a card is placed in thebottom-left cornerof the board, and its grid shows that it will affect the tile beneath it,nothing will happen because there’s no tile beneath the card.
When afirst-rank cardwith no special abilities is played on afirst-rank tile, the tiles that its grid demonstrates will be affected usuallybecome two-rank tilesif they’re already yours at first rank. If theyaren’tyours, they’re freshly in your control, and will thus be only first rank.
Turning one-rank tiles into second-rank tiles meansyou can play second-rank cards on those tiles. Conversely,playing a card on a second-rank tile, should its affected tile range include something that’s under your control,creates a third-rank tiledesigned forthe most powerful cards.
Play continues untilneither player can place any cards. This tends to happen the most frequently becauseboth players have exhausted their controlled tiles.
If you aren’t careful about ensuring that you’re gaining tiles, you’ll be unable to play a card. Sometimes,the board will fill up completelybefore the game ends.
Tactics For Victory
You want todeprive your opponent of opportunities to continue building control.The foes you face will beaiming to do the same to you.A critical part of this strategy involvescards that enhance or weaken(sometimes even outright destroy) targeted cards.
Some Queen’s Blood cards aredesigned for the long haul,which is to say that,since they take the state of the game into account when played, they can reverse one’s fortunes dramatically.
Cards thatreplace other cardsare prominent in this regard, but there are also cards thatenhance or weaken multiple cards already on the board based on current conditions when played. Dropping one of these onto a controlled tile several rounds in can be a total game-changer.
Collecting Cards And Player Rank
There aretwo ways to acquire Queen’s Blood cards. The first, and easiest, is bypurchasing booster packs from participating vendors. Don’t worry -these packs have established cards within them, so you aren’t going to be buying several to find the card you want. It’s on the tin.
You want to scoop these up whenever you see them, becausethis is the only way to obtain these cards. They can’t be won, only purchased.
The other method, and the one pertaining tonearly every powerful card, is bywinning the card from an opponentthe first time you achieve victory. Every Queen’s Blood opponent in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a new card for you to snag.
There isalmost never a penalty for losing a game of Queen’s Blood,andyou can click Retryupon your defeat to keep at it until you win. you’re able to evenedit your deck to accommodate the other player’s demonstrated strategywithout exiting out of the match.
Queen’s Blood Ranks
As you win matches against a rising number of NPCs,your Queen’s Blood rank will improve over time. Most playershave a minimum rank before you can challenge them, so there’s an order towhich groups of players can be challengedat any given time.
The exception to all this occurs duringChapter 6, aboard the Shinra-8.The luxury cruise ship hosts aQueen’s Blood tournament, and you’ll move on to the next round so long as you manage to win each match.You aren’t required to emerge victorious, but you should try!
It takes a while to manifest, but eventually,a side quest will emerge as you raise your Queen’s Blood rank. It’s good fun.
Queen’s Blood Rewards
Queen’s Blood can be rewarding all on its own if you have a challenging enough spirit and a burgeoning love for the game. But there aretangible rewards as well, and not just the cards themselves.(This isn’t Final Fantasy 8 - you’re able to’t morph them into items!)
The aforementionedtournament aboard the Shinra-8 gets you exclusive cutscenesif you make it to the finals. Since failing to reach this point is only possible if you feel you’re unable to defeat an opponent,you should come to Chapter 5 prepared with some good cards.
Occasionally,Queen’s Blood will intersect with a side quest. To advance the side quest, you might need to win a match. But the greatest rewards comeat the end of Queen’s Blood’s own side quest. We’ll be sure to add other rewards as we encounter them!
